The Construction of Knowledge in Classroom Talk

Social interaction is important for the development of knowledge ( M. Chapman, 1991 ). Social interaction, however, takes many forms, and J. Piaget (1977/1995) proposed that the construction of knowledge is facilitated in cooperative as opposed to constraining relationships. These views of knowledge...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of the learning sciences 2010-07, Vol.19 (3), p.358-402
Main Authors: Atwood, Sherrie, Turnbull, William, Carpendale, Jeremy I. M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age Differences
Classroom Communication
Classroom discussion
Classroom interaction
Classroom management
College Students
Colleges
Conversation
Cooperation
Cooperative Learning
Dialogism
Discourse Analysis
Discussion
Discussion (Teaching Technique)
Higher education
Inhibition
Instructional design
Interaction
Interpersonal Relationship
Knowledge
Knowledge Level
Learning
Persuasive Discourse
Philosophy
Psychology
Reasoning
Resistance (Psychology)
Social interaction
Social Theories
Teachers
Teaching Methods
Universities
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Social interaction is important for the development of knowledge ( M. Chapman, 1991 ). Social interaction, however, takes many forms, and J. Piaget (1977/1995) proposed that the construction of knowledge is facilitated in cooperative as opposed to constraining relationships. These views of knowledge development were drawn on in a study of classroom talk in higher education, namely in 2 first- and 2 fourth-year college and university psychology classes. Classroom talk was recorded, transcribed, and analyzed following conversation analytic ( H. Sacks, 1992 ) and social pragmatic ( W. Turnbull, 2003 ) approaches. Examination of how cooperation and constraint were constituted in the corpus was based on N. Mercer's (1995, 2000) categorization of different ways of making reasoning manifest, namely exploratory talk, or the joint negotiation of ideas; disputational talk, or the competitive negotiation of knowledge claims; and cumulative talk, or the uncritical addition of knowledge claims. Analysis focused on the sequential structures of classroom talk in and through which reasoning is achieved. Analysis revealed that most fourth-year talk was exploratory, whereas most first-year talk was disputational or cumulative.
ISSN:1050-8406
1532-7809
DOI:10.1080/10508406.2010.481013